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A fast change of life to a higher class usually comes at a hefty price. It is not everyone who is living in a mansion who is “comfortable”

Reflections Isdore Guvamombe
The year was 2009. The Eurocentric sanctions had bit into the pocket of all and sundry in Zimbabwe. Almost everyone’s purse was perforated and the sooner you put money the sooner it lost its value. Harare had lost its grandeur, glamour and sunshine city status. Life had become a real struggle.
Chiedza went to the bank. She wanted money to buy medication for her ailing mother back in the village in the land of milk, honey and dust or Guruve.

At the bank, she was required to produce a doctor’s prescription, but still the money was not easily forthcoming.
Her mother was hypertensive, diabetic and had heart problems hence she could not do without medication. Chiedza was desperate for that cash.

Besides, this combination of ailments required specific food and it was hard to come by.
She was in a fix.

She stood outside the spilling banking mall, grounded and confused about the next move.
Her eyes transfixed to the ground, her brain darting and wandering about, scanning the world for a solution, Chiedza started soliloquising.
She subconsciously threw her hands around, like a prophet casting away demons or an old-fashioned farmer broadcasting crops.
She was visibly shaken and troubled.

She did not even notice a man who had watched her for too long, from a Mercedes Benz parked nearby.
An airtime vendor brought her back to her senses, by tapping on her shoulder and telling her someone in the Merc was calling her.
Slowly, reluctantly and tentatively, she walked to the car. It was a rather prissy, constipated hen walk.

The man in the car, told her, he had watched and noticed she was troubled.
He wanted to understand and help her.

Chiedza narrated her story with the sickly sweetness of a maid at the same time trying to arrange her sorry face into a smile. The result was a horrible smile. He said his name was B.I.G, not Biggie or Big but B.IG.

B.I.G pulled a briefcase and God forbid, the green US dollar notes were stashed like useless pieces of paper.
The US dollar was scarce and equivalent to diamond those days.

It was not even gold, but diamond!
She was given a brick to deal with all the bills.
B.I.G was generous. Too, too generous to a stranger.
After exchanging phone numbers, B.I.G drove off.

As the Merc puffed and whizzed off Chiedza was happy and confused, concurrently.
If she ‘‘burnt’’ a few notes, she would be a trillionaire.
She had suddenly become a multi-trillionaire.
She shivered with joy.

A few minutes later B.I.G phoned, he wanted to send Chiedza a driver and a car to take the medication to her mother to the village and back.
Chiedza was more than happy and accepted the offer.

Within an hour, the driver and the car, a different Merc were sent and off they drove past Mazowe, past Concession, past Mvurwi, burying behind rustic villages and vast swathes of farmland right into the belly of a village in Guruve.

Her mother was shocked to see Chiedza offload such a huge amount of groceries in these hard times.
The medication and the prospects of a Merc parked besides her pole and dagga kitchen in full view of the entire village made her feel great.
The driver only greeted Chiedza’s mother and returned to the car. He sat patiently, scrolling up and down his phone.

B.I.G phoned Chiedza, again.
She left the hut and went behind to answer.
He said she should take her time.

The driver would stay there for as long as she wanted that day. After all, the driver was under instruction to drop her off at her lodgings in Mbare by the end of the day. At sunset, the late October light shone with the colour of a cider, leaving her face with an expression of happiness as she slid into the car.

The driver took off.
On the way she tried to squeeze as much information about B.I.G as possible, but the driver gave too little useful information. Most of it came as one word answers. She gave up.
All she got was B.I.G was monied and married.

She was dropped off and she could not wait but share her experience with her two friends, Joina and Chipo.
She woke them up and the springs of the bed they shared creaked as they turned to hear her story.

It was amazing.

Each day that passed by, phone calls from B.I.G continued pouring. Everything she wanted B.I.G offered instantly. Sweet nothings were exchanged and they fell in love. B.I.G could not fathom parking his fleet of cars in Mbare. Three weeks down the line Chiedza bade farewell to Mbare and indeed her friends.

She was told to leave all her furniture and even donate it to her friends.
Bigger things awaited her.
Chiedza’s new home was in Borrowdale.

On arrival, she felt her usually sturdy feet develop into jelly. The gardens were lush green.
She gathered her composure by the doorstep and sighed. Inside the house she exploded into a little dance around the lounge, flapping her arms like a demented bat. She stopped and marvelled at how everything was white — the walls, the furniture, the door mats, even the ceiling. The house was big and had a warren of corridors. It was spectacular.

It was all hers.

The first night, she went to sleep early leaving B.I.G in the lounge. There was a bar in the lounge with an assortment of expensive whisky, wine and brandy.

B.I.G sat in the sofa and drank slowly.
After turning and twisting uncountable times in bed Chiedza realised BIG was not coming.
She tip-toed to the lounge and found B.I.G still drinking and seated as if it was afternoon.
She tip-toed back and sneaked into the snow white sheets. She slept and when she woke up it was 5am.
B.I.G still sat on the same sofa.
He never seemed worried about not sleeping.

He suddenly went into the bathroom bathed, changed and off he drove to “work”.
It was the same scenario for a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month, two months and so on.
Chiedza was soon to accept that it was the order of the day. B.I.G never slept.
He would give Chiedza whatever she wanted, but he would never sleep.
He would never share a bed with her.

He would never touch her. He would sometimes come into the bedroom in the morning, pretending not to see her, lying on her back staring at the ceiling.

Chiedza watched television a lot.
Maids came to work every day, but she did not even know when and how they were paid.
She did nothing.

She was stopped from even going to work.
All she wanted was there in the house, except B.I.G, himself. She was soon to get irritated by everything.
Each morning, she felt tired, irritable and resented.
She felt tethered like a goat.

Suddenly she missed the ghetto and the village.
She missed playing cards with her friends.
She missed gossip, trivia, the muckraking, the mounds of rubbish, love.
In the afternoon, she sneaked out to see her long lost boyfriend and confided in him.
Naturally, for a woman that sexually starved, it became 10 out of 10.

She went back unnoticed.
That night, the incessant chatter of the bedroom TV got into her nerves and she switched it off.
Thereafter, she stared at the blank screen not moving, acting like a zombie.

B.I.G still drank and sat in his usual position on the sofa. There was a certain difficulty in integrating his sexual drive with the rest of his personality, centred on his unorthodox money-spinning ventures.

A crash in the bedroom bathroom brought her scurrying. She went to investigate, and the bathroom mirror lay shattered on the floor, the shards scattered and glinting around. But there was no one.

B.I.G did not respond.
Fear gripped her.

Her sixth sense told her there was someone else in the house. A second look into the bathroom saw a ghostly figure of a goatee bearded elderly dwarf, naked and advancing at her.

The dwarf fumed, saying something like Chiedza had cheated on him.
Cheating on a money-spinning goblin?
She fell to the ground.

She was a gibbering huddle on the floor, all the beauty and sense driven out of her.
When she rose up B.I.G was fuming.
She wanted him to get broke.

He ordered her to pack and go with virtually everything and leave the house empty.
Three days later Chiedza died.